“You aren’t falling in love with your Thrive guy are you?”, he came in and asked as he sat down next to me. It has felt like an incredibly long past couple of days, and I don’t even feel like there’s a good reason why. Something about this time of year just drains me, and I don’t know if it’s the change in weather or the increase of activity out in the cold. I did not go to class tonight because I was so sleepy and tired I could not stay awake.

I don’t remember what I said. But I’ve been dressing up, and putting on makeup, and spraying my hair with my handpicked scent of “Empowered and Confident”. You were there almost the whole day, he said. We had group for the full three hours this morning, then a half-hour of supervision, then some down time before I had two back-to-back new patient assessments. I was grateful when the 3PM rescheduled for tomorrow.

But no, I am not falling in love with him. Do I still think maybe that this is the perfect place to work and that he’s somewhat of a unicorn in terms of his mixture of practices and beliefs? I do think that, but am also totally open for that to not be the case. It kind of hit me in the middle of the assessment this afternoon, that this person is here expecting something, and that expectation is for me to be able to help them somehow.

The whole thing kind of freaked me out, and reminded me of the importance of seeking God with each person. The feedback I get in my student evaluations has consistently been that of leaning into the moment more intuitively with what I’ve learned and what I already know. I felt today when I was listening to this client, “What do I do with this? Where do I go from here?”, once the computerized questions were over (thank God).

And he expected me to know the answer to that. To say it broke my heart is perhaps too extreme, but it did something to the inside of me that touched, humbled, and gave me that I want to cry right now feeling. I feel like seeing people like this is its own kind of exercise I will have to get used to. It was harder than I thought, but still enjoyable enough to look forward to the next time. Believing in those, I’m sure, will get easier too.